Percutaneous angioplasty is a therapeutic medical procedure for increasing blood flow through a blood vessel.
For one known procedure, a guide catheter is inserted into the cardiovascular system of a patient and guided toward a region having accumulated deposits along the inner walls of a blood vessel. An elongated flexible guidewire is inserted into the guide catheter and guided beyond the distal end of the guide catheter through the cardiovascular system to the deposit region. As the path to the deposit region may be tortuous, the guidewire is typically flexible and bent to a desired configuration at a distal tip of the guidewire to facilitate steering of the guidewire into branching blood vessels. The guidewire typically has radiopaque regions viewable with an x-ray imaging system to monitor guidewire progress through the patient.
An elongated catheter having a deflated balloon is routed over the guidewire so as to position the deflated balloon in the deposit region. Once positioned, the balloon may be inflated to widen the passageway through the deposits in the blood vessel and therefore increase blood flow.